In Process and Reality and other works, Alfred North Whitehead struggled to come to terms with the impact the new science of quantum mechanics would have on metaphysics. This book is ...
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In Process and Reality and other works, Alfred North Whitehead struggled to come to terms with the impact the new science of quantum mechanics would have on metaphysics. This book is the first extended analysis of the intricate relationships between relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and Whitehead's cosmology. Illuminated here is the intersection of science and philosophy in Whitehead's work, and details of Whitehead's attempts to fashion an ontology coherent with quantum anomalies. Including a non-specialist introduction to quantum mechanics, the book adds an essential new dimension to our understanding of Whitehead.Less

Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead

Michael Epperson

Published in print: 2004-07-15

In Process and Reality and other works, Alfred North Whitehead struggled to come to terms with the impact the new science of quantum mechanics would have on metaphysics. This book is the first extended analysis of the intricate relationships between relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and Whitehead's cosmology. Illuminated here is the intersection of science and philosophy in Whitehead's work, and details of Whitehead's attempts to fashion an ontology coherent with quantum anomalies. Including a non-specialist introduction to quantum mechanics, the book adds an essential new dimension to our understanding of Whitehead.

Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in René Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have ...
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Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in René Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have heretofore been the phenomenological shadows of “Cartesian rationality.” In doing so, it discovers dynamic signs of spectral alterity lodged both at the core and on the edges of modern Cartesian subjectivity. Calling for a Copernican reorientation of the very notion “Cartesianism,” the book's series of close, creatively critical readings of Descartes’ signature images brings the dramatic forces, moments, and scenes of the cogito into our own contemporary moment. While unravelling the knotted skeins of ambiguity that have been spun within philosophical modernity out of such clichés as “Descartes, the abstract modern subject” and “Descartes, the father of modern philosophy,” the analysis highlights a figure who is at once everywhere and nowhere, a living Cartesian ghost. This effort at revitalizing and reframing the legacy of Cartesian modernity, in a way mindful of its proto-phenomenological traces, also involves reflecting on some of the trends in contemporary Cartesian scholarship while putting Descartes in dialogue with a host of twentieth century and contemporary Continental philosophers ranging from Edmund Husserl, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, and Alain Badiou among others.Less

Reading Descartes Otherwise : Blind, Mad, Dreamy, and Bad

Kyoo Lee

Published in print: 2012-11-14

Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in René Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have heretofore been the phenomenological shadows of “Cartesian rationality.” In doing so, it discovers dynamic signs of spectral alterity lodged both at the core and on the edges of modern Cartesian subjectivity. Calling for a Copernican reorientation of the very notion “Cartesianism,” the book's series of close, creatively critical readings of Descartes’ signature images brings the dramatic forces, moments, and scenes of the cogito into our own contemporary moment. While unravelling the knotted skeins of ambiguity that have been spun within philosophical modernity out of such clichés as “Descartes, the abstract modern subject” and “Descartes, the father of modern philosophy,” the analysis highlights a figure who is at once everywhere and nowhere, a living Cartesian ghost. This effort at revitalizing and reframing the legacy of Cartesian modernity, in a way mindful of its proto-phenomenological traces, also involves reflecting on some of the trends in contemporary Cartesian scholarship while putting Descartes in dialogue with a host of twentieth century and contemporary Continental philosophers ranging from Edmund Husserl, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, and Alain Badiou among others.

The Treatise on Consequences contains the most important treatment of logical consequence in the middle ages. Buridan was a philosopher working at the University of Paris in the mid-fourteenth ...
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The Treatise on Consequences contains the most important treatment of logical consequence in the middle ages. Buridan was a philosopher working at the University of Paris in the mid-fourteenth century. The rediscovery of Aristotle’s logical works in the late twelfth century led to a revival and fresh development of logical theory, culminating in Buridan’s general treatment in the Treatise on Consequences. He gives a novel treatment of the categorical syllogism based on the notion of distribution, which laid the basis of the theory of the syllogism in traditional logic in succeeding centuries. He gives a general account of the modal terms ‘necessary’, ‘possible’ and ‘contingent’, proceeding to an entirely original treatment of modal syllogisms free from the problems that beset Aristotle’s modal syllogism. In particular, he gives a coherent account of the “ampliation” of the subject of divided modal propositions to the possible and setting out their logical inter-relationships systematically. The Latin text was edited from the three extant manuscripts in the 1970s, and was first translated into English in 1985. This entirely new translation aims for a more accurate and clearer rendering of Buridan’s text, and is accompanied by a substantial introduction outlining the context of Buridan’s treatment and explaining in detail his arguments and his theoretical position.Less

Treatise on Consequences

John Buridan

Published in print: 2014-12-15

The Treatise on Consequences contains the most important treatment of logical consequence in the middle ages. Buridan was a philosopher working at the University of Paris in the mid-fourteenth century. The rediscovery of Aristotle’s logical works in the late twelfth century led to a revival and fresh development of logical theory, culminating in Buridan’s general treatment in the Treatise on Consequences. He gives a novel treatment of the categorical syllogism based on the notion of distribution, which laid the basis of the theory of the syllogism in traditional logic in succeeding centuries. He gives a general account of the modal terms ‘necessary’, ‘possible’ and ‘contingent’, proceeding to an entirely original treatment of modal syllogisms free from the problems that beset Aristotle’s modal syllogism. In particular, he gives a coherent account of the “ampliation” of the subject of divided modal propositions to the possible and setting out their logical inter-relationships systematically. The Latin text was edited from the three extant manuscripts in the 1970s, and was first translated into English in 1985. This entirely new translation aims for a more accurate and clearer rendering of Buridan’s text, and is accompanied by a substantial introduction outlining the context of Buridan’s treatment and explaining in detail his arguments and his theoretical position.

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